Chapter 89
“Baby, what’s wrong?”
Soya asked worriedly.
Standing on my tiptoes to examine Shelby’s wound, I glanced at Jen.
“How long has it been since you arrived?”
The moment I asked, Jen hesitated before answering.
“It’s… it’s been a little over two weeks……”
My eyes widened and my brow furrowed.
“Over two weeks and it hasn’t healed? Even with Rubarina?”
I spoke to the guards standing behind me.
“Please bring disinfectant and bandages. And Rubarina too.”
At that moment, I didn’t miss the way Bermad’s face turned pale.
“That’s strange.”
A heavy silence settled over the tent.
I climbed onto the footstool the guards had brought and carefully examined Shelby’s wound.
“It looks like he’s only been taking Rubawen, doesn’t it?”
Jen’s face stiffened.
“N-no, Lady. Shelby has been taking Rubarina and Rubawen together all this time……”
I shook my head.
“No. If that were true, it would’ve healed already.”
The wound wasn’t infected, but it wasn’t healing at all.
“What have you been applying to it?”
Jen, frozen in shock, snapped back to his senses.
He immediately opened the small bedside drawer and handed me a jar of ointment.
The moment I opened the lid, I knew.
“This isn’t Rubarina.”
The tent erupted into murmurs.
Jen’s eyes widened as well.
I sniffed the ointment and stirred its texture with my pinky finger.
“Yeah. This is just cheap moisturizer.”
The way it clumped on my finger was completely different from Rubarina.
Rubarina was clear and transparent, but this one was dull in color and thick.
“And it doesn’t smell like Riquity herb at all.”
Rubarina’s main ingredient, Rubarin grass, had an extremely strong odor.
That’s why a cooling, strongly scented herb called Riquity was always added when making the ointment.
But this one barely smelled of it at all.
I looked back at Shelby.
“This ointment… its condition isn’t very good either. It turns yellow as soon as it’s exposed to air—it looks expired.”
Jen’s face went deathly pale.
“If you apply something like this every day, of course the wound won’t heal.”
“T-that can’t be. We just used what we were supplied with……”
Jen trailed off mid-sentence and suddenly stopped breathing.
“…Don’t tell me.”
Muttering a curse under his breath, he looked around the tent.
Bermad—who had been there just moments ago—had vanished without a trace.
“Ha! This is Bermad’s doing.”
I nodded at the furious Jen.
“Yeah. Only a mid-level manager could swap Rubarina with cheap ointment.”
Crossing my arms, I looked at Sir Logrio.
“Sir Logrio. Let’s go catch that man right now.”
“Huff—huff!”
Bermad hurried along, his face filled with fear.
From the heavy inner pocket of his coat, the bottles of Rubarina he’d been siphoning off clinked together.
“Damn it, that cursed little brat!”
If she’d just focused on hiring workers for the greenhouse, why did she suddenly have to inspect Shelby’s wound?
“I knew it was bad news from the start—some commoner-born brat acting all high and mighty.”
Rumors that Lady Avner came from an orphanage had already spread throughout the Empire.
A Grand Duke adopting a commoner child as his daughter was that shocking.
“If it weren’t for that damned kid, I could’ve pocketed a few thousand more tera.”
He cut swiftly through paths between the bushes.
Having lived in the camps, he’d walked these routes dozens of times—his steps were fast and precise.
The place he stopped at was the entrance to another migrant tent, similar to the one he stayed in.
“Hey, Win!”
As he pushed open the cloth door, a familiar back came into view.
“I’ve got something to ask.”
Bermad hurried over and grabbed the shoulder of the person facing away from him.
“Bermad. What is it?”
When the person turned around, a pair of strikingly beautiful eyes met his.
Bermad glanced around the tent nervously as he replied.
“I told you—I came to ask something.”
He thought no one else was there besides Win, but someone else approached from one corner of the tent.
“Wow, Bermad. What brings you here at this hour?”
“El, you were here too? It’s nothing—just something I need to ask.”
Sounding exasperated, Bermad roughly wiped his forehead.
Win and El.
The two in front of him were siblings who had lived at the northern edge of the continent before coming down to Avner territory.
It was strange how they didn’t resemble each other at all, but Bermad didn’t dwell on it.
“I’m in a hurry right now. Do you remember that black market you mentioned last time?”
At Bermad’s urgency, El tilted her head and smiled.
“Huh? What about it?”
“The one that buys Rubarina at high prices! You talked about it at that meeting of mid-level managers!”
El let out an “Ah” and looked at Win, who finally smiled and replied.
“Why do you ask?”
“That’s none of your business. I just have something to take care of.”
Win and El exchanged a strange look.
Bermad stomped his feet impatiently.
“Come on, just tell me already! This is urgent!”
Win nodded as if he understood, then casually asked,
“Are you going alone?”
While gathering cloth and some supplies from a shelf, Bermad replied,
“Well, for now.”
“What about the others?”
“Those guys can deal with it themselves! I’m busy trying to save my own skin—”
He slowly shut his mouth.
“…What?”
He looked at the siblings with suspicion.
“How do you know?”
That there were others besides him heading to the black market.
Win and El met each other’s eyes again.
Then, as if it amused them, they laughed together.
Bermad blinked uneasily, confused by the situation.
“So there really are others besides you.”
At Win’s murmured words, Bermad’s lips trembled.
Ten days ago, the mid-level managers from various camps had gathered to receive supplies.
Win and El had been among them.
The siblings, who claimed to have traveled all across the Empire before arriving here, brought up a story that immediately caught Bermad’s attention.
“I heard Rubarina prices are skyrocketing. Nobles can’t get enough of it, and on the black market it’s selling for twenty times the regular price.”
It was shocking.
That day, Bermad realized there was another use for the Rubarina he’d been skimming off.
And…
“I had no idea it was selling for that much.”
“Right?”
He instinctively recognized others who seemed to be thinking the same thing.
When he secretly approached them later, he found that several other mid-level managers had also begun siphoning off Rubarina.
“Y-you—who are you people?!”
Bermad shouted in fear.
Win quietly lowered his eyelids.
El approached with an innocent smile and firmly grabbed Bermad’s hand.
“Hey, Bermad. Who are they?”
“W-what?!”
“The other mid-level managers stealing Rubarina. Tell me, and I’ll tell you where the black market is.”
Bermad stammered in panic.
“N-no, why all of a sudden—!”
But time was running out.
Judging by how the brat had inspected Shelby’s wound, his scheme had already been exposed.
“D-damn it! Jax from Camp 3! Chakon from Camp 7! And some guy from Camp 24—I don’t know his name!”
“Hmm, is that all?”
“I—I’m not completely sure. The guy from Camp 46 looked suspicious too! There was a patient there whose wound wasn’t healing either, so he probably took some too!”
Win nodded, then finally spoke as if doing him a favor.
“It’s at the very end of the southern alley in the capital’s slums. That’s where the black market is.”
Bermad’s face brightened.
He quickly slung his cheap bundle over his shoulder and spun around.
“You could’ve just told me nicely instead of making this such a hassle!”
Just as he started striding toward the tent entrance—
“I wonder if you’ll even be able to go.”
El’s quiet, mocking voice came from behind.
Before the words fully registered, the untouched tent flap flew wide open.
Bermad stumbled back a step.
Dozens of armed knights stood before him.
At the front was a particularly tall one.
The platinum-grade equipment and his ruggedly handsome face were striking—but…
“Got him!”
What caught Bermad’s eye first was the person in his arms.
The orphanage-born young lady he’d seen earlier.
Annelia beamed at him and said to the guards,
“Let’s arrest that man right away!”
